


A Story

by Goodluckdetective (scorpiontales)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Ensemble Cast, Fluff, M/M, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 22:49:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8819197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiontales/pseuds/Goodluckdetective
Summary: Hanzo owns a sketchbook.
What rests on its pages is a story if one knows where to look.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I EMERGE FROM FINALS HELL TO DROP THIS IN THE TAG  
> HAVE FUN YOU CRAZY KIDS

Hanzo keeps a sketchbook between his dresser and the wall. It’s a battered thing. The journal is old, tattered and worn down from years of being down the road. He’s had it since he joined Overwatch, the previous journal he carried tucked away somewhere under the floorboards. A new sketchbook seemed fitting at the time: a new journal for a new beginning. Sentimental, perhaps, but sound.

 

Everyone knows about it; it’s not a secret. He draws in public constantly, when the mess hall is less busy than usual, when he’s supervising training instead of participating himself. Many members of Overwatch have seen him sitting over the battered thing, sketching away with what he has on hand, usually a pencil or pen. They’ve seen his drawings too, whenever they’ve bother to peek over his shoulder or sit next to him during mess. They’re sketchy things, often more focused on the smallest details than the big picture. A fitting style for a man whose job is to hit a lone target in a sea of activity. 

 

No, Hanzo is not shy about his art. But he is no fool either. He will not give someone the journal to flip through at their leisure. He knows what lies in those pages is more than a few drawings.

 

It’s a story, if one knows to look for it.

 

It starts simple, the first few pages full of scenery drawings. The world of the Watchpoint is sketched out almost like a Blueprint. The highest peaks of the place appear first, large shots of sunsets and sunrises. Public rooms follow it, the mess hall, his own room. Every sketch until the fifteenth page are lacking occupants. Empty rooms, housing nothing but furniture. The Watchpoint’s garden’s trail covered with footprints with no people creating them.

 

The sixteenth page is where it changes. Winston’s lab is on that page, one of the first non-public spaces Hanzo has sketched so far that is not his own. In it, the lone occupant is Satya, charming a light projection of a bird from her hands. It’s not a detailed drawing. Satya’s form in the piece is only a series of sketchy lines made recognizable by the silhouette and the prosthetic. But she is there.

 

And soon are others.

 

Winston, giving a lecture to the team about a mission gone wrong. His glasses are the most fleshed out detail, drawn with every smudge on the lenses. Then Fareeha, examining one of her rockets, the callouses on her hands drawn with the slightest of lines. On page twenty, a picture of Ana, holding out a cup of tea with perhaps the most detail seen in a human figure yet. 

 

Then on page twenty one, a small drawing of a boy holding a sparrow, solely done from memory. Next to him stands Genji, Genji as he is now, under the tree of the Watchpoint. In his hands is one of Satya’s creations, a sparrow made of light alone. Past and present. Mistakes and an effort to repair them.

 

After that, there are no drawings without people besides Hanamura.  

 

Characters flood the pages, from people Hanzo spots on missions, to those he sees day to day. They gain expressions, gain movement, becoming more than stock still flashes of figures in the distance. Tracer zips around a full page spread instead of standing in a corner. McCree tips his hat at him from where he stands on another rooftop. Morrison clenches his visor with a strength that looks almost painful after they fail a mission.

 

They’re stories, every one of them. Maybe ones not so easily understood at a glance, but stories nonetheless. Hana playing Starcraft becomes an echo of a tale she tells about her father, the man she still cannot beat. Lúcio’s dancing becomes the same movements he used to teach his younger sisters. Zarya’s arm wrestling contest becomes the story of how she gained respect among her own men back home.

 

Hanzo’s stories are there too, tucked in the places one must search to find. Genji laughing at a joke told by an offscreen figure. Zenyatta floating an inch about the air, calm and at rest. Satya stirring a cup of tea, fiddling with geometric projections in the air.

 

McCree stretching out his hand on an empty page, lips turned up in a smile.

 

And that’s a story in it’s own, isn’t it? What isn’t seen on the page but had to be present for it to exist. Stories only two people know in it’s entirety. 

 

More pages follow. A sword unused for over a decade rests upon a shrine. A Father decades dead stares at him from inside a darkened room. An empty pair of cowboy boots linger by the door, mud caked on the sides. 

 

The second to last filled page is different, drawn with another hand. It’s on a different sheet of paper, that was ripped out then pasted into the notebook.  It’s not a good drawing, not in the slightest, all rough lines and terrible anatomy. The work of someone unpracticed with a pen. But the smirk on the face is recognizable enough, along with the light shading that denotes tuffs of grey hair. Underneath someone has written the only words of English in the journal.

 

_ “Never see you drawing yourself. I think you can do a better job than me, right?” _

 

Another page. This time there are two figures instead of one. McCree laughs as he twirls around an empty rec room floor. Across from him is a much better depiction of the man on the former page. A cowboy hat rests on his head, tilted at an odd angle.

 

He is smiling.


End file.
